In the business environment there is a classic problem of using a whiteboard or flipchart to brainstorm a discussion and afterwards having to find a means of recording the outcome of the discussion. Traditionally, this would involve someone staying behind and copying the diagrammatic information from a whiteboard onto paper, taking a photo of the whiteboard or flipchart, or, with more modern whiteboards, the scribbles can either be printed or even saved as a digital image, such as a bitmap.
It is often useful to be able to share the information with multiple people, and to enable the recorded image to be modified or updated at a later point. Digital images, such as bitmaps, which are represented by a collection of pixels, are not always the easiest to modify. Often, such as for technical drawings or flow-charts, what is required is a vector object based graphic (also referred to as object-oriented graphics or geometric modeling), which uses geometrical primitives to create diagrams which can be manipulated and shared easily.
One approach to this might be to transfer a hand-drawn diagram to vector graphic format by manually recreating the information using a traditional mouse-based point-and-click drawing program, such as Microsoft® Visio. However, this technique requires a significant effort on behalf of the user.
Another option is to generate a digital copy of the diagram and then load the digital image into some image recognition software which would transfer the information into vector graphic format. However, this would require very complex image recognition software that would need to be able to make decisions based on certain assumptions. If different objects in the image overlap each other, then the intelligence (and assumptions) required to differentiate between the various objects would be significantly increased.
A digital image may be created using a digital camera, scanner or the like, or the diagram might be drawn directly onto a touch-sensitive screen of a computer processing device.